


At the Twilight's Last Gleaming

by lillianmmalter



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 03:17:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7388392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillianmmalter/pseuds/lillianmmalter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the fourth of July, Peggy takes Daniel to the Brooklyn Bridge and tells him about Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the Twilight's Last Gleaming

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Agent Carter or the Star Spangled Banner.

The muggy, dirty, noisy air of New York wrapped around them like a blanket, comforting and familiar, if something of a shock after two years together in the balmy climate of LA. They strolled across the bridge hand in hand, careful to distance themselves from the grinning tourists taking pictures of the skyline and keeping out of the way of walking New Yorkers eager to get to whatever awaited them on the other side of the river. Peggy and Daniel were in no hurry to be anywhere themselves. They were already where they planned to be.

Peggy counted girders as they walked until finally they arrived where she was leading them. Halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge facing south to Governors Island, angled perfectly to see the sun setting over the water, she stopped them and slipped her hand free of Daniel's to lean awkwardly against the railing.

She didn't speak, couldn't speak, for the first little while they were there. She was conscious of Daniel slipping his arm out of his crutch and leaning against the railing beside her, but he left her to her thoughts and she was grateful.

Her wedding ring glinted in the fading sunlight and she felt tears rise in her throat as she looked at it on her finger in this place for the first time. 

"I said goodbye to him here," she said, unable to meet Daniel's eyes. "That night I turned you down for drinks. I took the last remaining sample of his blood and poured it into the river. It was the only funeral he ever got. Did you know that?"

She looked at him then and saw his eyes held the sadness she recognized now as being his regrets about the war, and the people and things lost to it.

"No," he said, then smiled ruefully. "I was kind of stuck in my own world when his plane went down. I didn't find out about him until later."

Peggy smiled at him, knowing at least some of the story now, and sniffed back the tears she refused to let fall. Daniel took her left hand in his; they splashed down her cheeks anyway.

"He didn't have anyone to pay for a funeral. No next of kin, no one to... Howard still insists he'll put on the biggest funeral yet the moment he finds him, but he refuses to let it happen without a body and he somehow got the government to listen to him." She laughed bitterly. "I don't think he wants to admit Steve's really gone. Not even after all this time."

"You ever talk to him about it?"

"No. Not like this. It's Howard."

Daniel chuckled. He and Howard got along fine, especially when Peggy was present, but she knew the two would never see eye to eye on most things. It actually made her life easier, in a way. She knew they'd never conspire together to do something "for her sake", the way Howard and Jarvis sometimes did. She wondered how Steve might have fit in to that dynamic, had he lived, then chastised herself. There was no point in dwelling on what ifs or could have beens, even if they did sneak up on her occasionally. They only ever made her sad.

"You know, he was the only thing missing from our wedding," she said, indulging herself a moment longer. "I was all right with my parents not being there, with Michael... But I desperately wished Steve had been there to walk me down the aisle. To meet the man I fell in love with."

"Yeah, I'm sure that woulda gone real well," Daniel said sardonically. She jostled him with her shoulder and smiled.

"Everyone always acts like we had some great claim to one another. We barely even kissed."

"But you still loved him."

"I did. A part of me always will. But I believe I'm exactly where I'm meant to be."

Daniel leaned in to kiss her lightly on the lips. She smiled at him and rested her head on his shoulder, humming in pleasure when his arm wrapped around her waist. They fell silent. Peggy looked out across the water, her heart swelling with an odd mixture of lightness and heaviness as she reflected on the past. Evening shadows slipped noisily into night, the lights of the city ablaze now in the distance. 

"He'd have been 31 today," she said, sniffing back another round of tears. She felt more than saw Daniel's head turning to look at her. She squeezed his hand. "It's funny, his birthday never affected me this much before. But this year..."

"A lot of things are different this year," Daniel said, lifting their hands to kiss her wrist.

She brushed the tears from her cheeks and smiled at him. "Yes, they are. For the better."

Her hand fell to the swell of her stomach, their child a restless ball of motion inside her. Soon everything would be different.

Fireworks began to light up the sky, first in illegal solitary bursts over the neighborhoods, and then in an orchestrated light show over the East River and beyond, in the distance, at the Statue of Liberty. Daniel tensed slightly beside her and she grabbed the hand he had around her waist and pulled it over her belly, anchoring him to the excited movements within. He leaned his weight on her more fully and she took it gladly.

When the last delayed pop of the last firework burst through the smoke-tinged air, the crowd of onlookers around them applauded the show, and Peggy and Daniel gathered themselves to begin a stiff walk back across the bridge to catch a cab to their hotel. They had both been on their feet for far too long tonight to walk any further.

Daniel raised his hand to flag down a taxi and Peggy stole one last glance back across the bridge, toward Brooklyn and Steve.

"Happy birthday, darling," she said. "I'm sorry you have to miss so much, but I promise I'll live enough for the both of us."

She joined her husband in the cab and drove off into her future.

**Author's Note:**

> I have very little idea what firework shows are like in New York City now, and couldn't find much with a brief search for what they were like then, so this is my best guess.


End file.
